JERUSALEM – Israel Kristal, the world’s oldest man who lived through both world wars and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, has passed away just a month short of his 114th birthday, according to Israel media sources.

Ynet on Saturday quoted Israel Kristal’s daughter as saying her father died Friday. Shula Kupershtuch says: “He always saw only light and good in everything.”

The Guardian reports that Oren Kristal, a grandson, said he died on Friday. “He managed to accomplish a lot. Every year he lived was like a few years for somebody else,” Oren told the Associated Press.

“He used to walk very fast until he was very old – faster than me – and he used to tell me that when he was my age if you didn’t walk fast enough your feet would stick to the frozen ground,” said Oren.

Guinness World Records awarded Kristal a certificate as the world’s oldest man last year.

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Kristal was confined to the Łódź ghetto and was later sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. His first wife and two children were killed in the Holocaust. Six million Jews were systematically murdered by German Nazis and their collaborators during the second world war.

Kristal survived the war — the only survivor of his large Jewish family.

Kristal is survived by two children, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, according to media reports.